As a teacher, you only have so much time in the day to teach your students to read. Some are terrific readers and get bored with the curriculum while others are receiving RTI interventions or may be gone for the entire reading lesson to receive specialized instruction. Or you may not teach reading, but struggle with helping students in your classes because they cannot read at grade level. No one knows better than a teacher the life-long importance of reading. So….the school provides professional development on teaching reading, orders the newest ‘research based’ reading curriculum, brings in trainers, speakers, and specialists to ensure that you and your colleagues are the best teachers in reading in the state of Maine! And then it is time for the high stakes testing. All that reading instruction is put on hold for a week, or even two weeks, to test students in an attempt to prove that the school’s “highly qualified” teachers are producing “highly performing” students.
Months pass and the results are in….the same gifted students are performing above the standard, the same average students are scoring in the proficient range, and the same struggling readers are performing below all of the others. Stop….breath…no don’t throw that apple shaped mug with chewed pencils in it. You are doing a great job and you know it, but in the world of high-stakes testing, there has to be someone to blame, right?
Well, thanks to research we now have a new target – parents. That’s right. No matter how good we become at teaching, national scores continue to linger far below international scores in reading.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) published What Can Parents Do to Help Their Children Succeed in School? This four page report outlines the results of a recent study linking parent involvement to the reading scores of 15 year olds. Among their findings they state:
- Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all.
- The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socio-economic background.
- Parents’ engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA (PISA, 2011).
Sarcasm aside, please don’t blame parents or yourself when student’s struggle to read. Continue your quality teaching, and encourage parents to read at home. Don’t be afraid to share the importance of establishing a daily routine at home of reading with a child. The research by PISA is just another confirmation that the educational needs of children do not stop when they get on the school bus.
So what do you do to encourage reading at home? Book bags, reading logs, classroom blog? Please use this blog as a way to share your successes and seek help from other teachers. Simply reply with questions and comments. We would love to hear from you.
Susan Joakim
For a copy of the PISA report go to: http://www.oecd.org/pages/0,3417,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
